Course Review: Zero To Sync: Production Masterclasses
I recently signed up for Zero To Sync, which is a sync licensing course offered by Heate. This course promises to help producers learn the foundational skills needed to get a sync placement in TV/Film. The total cost of the course was $400 and comes with the main course, Zero To Sync, and a side Masterclass "Producing for Sync." The course is taught by Nathan (@xcaliberzero on Instagram), which is how I found out about the course. I checked out this add in course and wanted to give a review and honest feedback.
The course is arranged into 3 sections: Arrangement, Mixing & Mastering, and Bonus.
The arrangement section includes 4 different videos - Comedy, Drama, Scene Opener & Underscore, and Scene Closer. In each video, Nathan takes you through the arrangement of an FL Studio Project. He plays the track, and talks about the theory behind the arrangement. Each video is about 5 minutes long, and has valuable information for the viewers on how to arrange for different genres of TV/Film, and best practices for production when given a cue sheet.
The next section, Mixing & Mastering, is a 2-part video. Part 1 is 17 minutes long. and the Part 2 is 7 minutes long. Nathan goes more in depth into his mixing strategies, the plugins he uses, and what things he keeps in mind when mixing and mastering his music for sync. This section is alot more detailed and Nathan takes you through a demo mix.
The videos have the same format as the Arrangement section - a screen recording of FL Studio with a narration over it. There is no fancy edits, cuts, or transitions, just a straight video.
In the last Bonus section, Nathan discusses another route producers can look into - which is creating demo tracks for sound kit companies. He shows off a demo track he made for a Native Instruments expansion pack, and discusses how producers can go about finding people to submit demos.
This section is very unique to the course and there is not much information floating around about how producers can do this, which made it very interesting.
The course also includes resources, including the arrangement templates, MIDI files, and .flp projects of all of the tracks show, which is really cool.
Overall, I was happy with the information I learned in the course. As a free add-on to Zero To Sync, it has value. You could likely find the information with enough searching on YouTube, but having the videos arranged with the resources all in once place is convenient.
I have yet to dive into the full Zero To Sync course, so can't yet judge if I think it was worth spending $500 on the whole thing, but so far the Discord community and the information I've started to learn has been valuable.
Overall Review: 7/10. While the course had valuable information, I was expecting to get more information on sound design and sound selection. The only Instrument VST Nathan really showed was ANA2 by Slate. The videos were also not too long, and also felt like I was watching a glorified YouTube video at times. The bonus section and the project files/resources make it worth checking out, though, and I'm happy that I have access to this course.